Man injured in officer involved shooting

A 25-year-old man was shot by police in the 400 block of Charles Street in the North End on Tuesday.Chris Procaylo / Chris Procaylo/Winnipeg Sun

Manitoba’s police watchdog has taken over the investigation after a man was shot by a Winnipeg police officer in the early hours of Tuesday morning in the North End.

Winnipeg police and the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba, which investigates all serious incidents involving police officers in Manitoba, confirmed that a 25-year-old man was shot in the 400 block of Charles Street at around 1 a.m. on Tuesday.

Winnipeg police spokesperson Const. Rob Carver could not go into details about the shooting at a press briefing on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, I can’t (say more),” he said. “This is always a tough area for us. Once it switches over and IIU takes the lead, there’s really nothing that we can say. We’re constrained by the protocol.”

Police said officers responded to an emergency call at a residence and were confronted by a man, who was subsequently shot by police.

The man was taken to hospital in critical condition, where he remains.

No officers were injured.

It’s the fifth shooting involving a Winnipeg police officer this year after having no officer-involved shootings in 2016

The two most recent shootings took place in September. A man was shot on Sept. 13 in the 400 block of Alfred Avenue and later died of his injuries. On Sept. 24, another man was shot by police, resulting in his death, after a police officer was stabbed.

On May 1, a police officer shot a man near the WPS’s downtown headquarters, in the skywalk between Garry Street and Smith Street during lunch hour. The man survived and IIU’s investigation into the incident determined police were justified in the shooting.

Carver said the recent rash of officer-involved shootings is just a reflection of random crime. Carver couldn’t say if the man in Tuesday’s incident was armed or not, but said that when an officer is presented with a situation where lives are at risk, officers are trained to use lethal force.

“Our officers are trained to use lethal force, or present lethal force, any time they feel their lives or the lives of anyone else are at risk or that themselves, or anyone around them, is at risk of grievous bodily harm,” Carver said. “You have tenths of seconds to make decisions. And when that lethal threat is there and it’s in a place where we have no ability to make any other choice, we can’t disengage, where there are other people involved and we can’t leave them there, we’re going to have to use lethal force.

A single police car guarded the scene out front while a cadet SUV was stationed behind the home, which was also taped off.

A neighbour, who asked not to be identified, said they heard loud banging coming from next door around the time of the incident.

“Everything was sort of muffled,” the neighbour said. “Then I heard gunshots. It was right outside my door.”

‘Again?’

Carver said police are wondering the same question that the public is: Why are officers involved in another shooting?

“I think our officers are probably saying the exact same thing,” Carver said. “We don’t go in and make some sort of a choice of if I’m going to shoot my gun or I’m not going to shoot my gun. These are the situations that are presented to us. And to be able to walk out of there and to have no one else killed and no one else at risk of grievous bodily harm, we have to use lethal (force).”

“The way our training is, it’s less of a decision and more of a situational imperative. We are presented with a threat and the only reasonable option in response to that threat is lethal force, in this case, a sidearm, and that’s the training.

“I can understand how the public could be going, ‘Yeah, uh, again?’ but really that’s what is happening to our officers.”

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